Two days ago, my wife and I were cooking dinner: Baked Dill Salmon. We placed the carefully prepared fish in the oven to bake for about ten minutes. Ten minutes later, raw fish. Our twenty year old oven died. A trip to Sears and $700 later, we have a new one on order.

Yesterday, I get to my client’s office and try to unlock my PC running Windows XP. Boom! “winlock.exe error, rebooting…” Yikes, I have never seen that before. When the poor machine finally comes back up, well let’s just say that it needs a new hard disk. Now I have to spend a week getting the thing setup for work, but the issue is I only have 1-2 weeks left on the project. Good timing.

That’s two, I wonder what the third disaster will be? They always come in threes don’t they?

The other day my wife and I were invited to a floor party in our apartment building by a couple in their sixties. We’ve been friendly with them ever since we moved in three years ago, but have never really gotten to know them.

We spent an amazing evening listening to their life stories. They shared adventures about working in the movie industry in California; about following their dreams and not having any regrets about how they spent their lives; about doing what they love and spending their time with the people that they love and enjoy.

Neither one followed the typical path of working for a large corporation, toiling away in a dingy gray office complex. They shared photographs of themselves with people such as Mariel Hemingway, Lyndon Johnson, and Frank Sinatra. They told us stories about the Gabor sisters and working on movie and theater sets. They took us through their adventures of marathon races and moving across the country simply for a change of scenery as their eyes would light up as they shared their memories and life experiences.

It was an amazing, inspirational evening. Not only did we create a stronger friendship with our neighbors, but it strengthened my resolve to follow my dreams and not someone else’s; to aim for a full life with no regrets.

I was really tired last night, so I didn’t get anything done at all. It was Friday after a long week at the day job. So I sat down infront of the Redsox game and tried to at least make a bit of headway with some game design ideas.

I was completely unsuccessful. I was just too darn tired. I couldn’t focus on my work, I coudn’t focus on the game. So when Battlestar Galactica game on, I set my work aside and watched that then went to bed.

My wife has to work this weekend, so I’ve been planning on dedicating a significant portion of my time to working on the beginnings of my game engine. So, promptly at 6am this morning (Saturday), I dragged my tired old body out of bed and set out to make my first french press full of coffee.

I love coffee. I love the smell, the taste, and the opportunity it gives me to step away from work every so often to grab a new cup. But my favorite part is the ritual of the first cup of the morning. It’s what gets me started. I love pouring the first cup and doctoring it up with sugar and milk or cream. I like mine with two sugars and enough milk to just make it medium-light.

But wait! We’re out of milk. Boy does that take the wind out of my sails. I guess I’m roughing it this morning with no milk or cream in my coffee. It’s a tough way to start the day, but here I go…